The use of protective gear in activities, such as some sports, containing some risk is always recommended. Although occurrence of a serious accident may sometimes be remote, people are becoming more aware that if such accident happens, head injuries are among the most serious injuries a person may suffer. Fortunately, with improved designs, reduced weight and increased comfort, protective helmets have gained tremendous popularity in recent years, especially in sports such as biking and downhill skiing.
Because of wind and cold, skiers very often wear goggles over their helmet. Unfortunately, this is not the most convenient design as wind may infiltrate in between the helmet and the goggles, freezing a wearer's forehead. This is especially true if there is a less than perfect match between the helmet and the goggles.
Furthermore, when the skier gets to the bottom of the slopes and waits in line for the chairlifts, he often takes his goggles off, letting them rest in equilibrium on a front portion of the helmet, retained by the goggles' elastic band. However, if the goggles are not perfectly positioned, they will often either flip up and end up retained by a retaining strap at the back of the helmet, or flip down, striking the eyes of the wearer completely caught off guard.
To mitigate these inconveniences, interesting solutions have been proposed. U.S. Pat. No. 4,287,615 to Morin discloses a ski helmet having an integrated withdrawable visor. The visor is moveable between a deployed position within a wearer's field of view for use of the visor and a retracted position behind a helmet shell. As the visor is deployed, its edges follow a guiding surface against which it is biased by a spring. As the visor reaches its fully deployed position, the guiding surface is made so that the visor moves towards a face of the wearer, sealing his eyes against wind infiltration. However, the movement required to move the visor is not natural as the wearer is required to move a lever, located at the base of the helmet, towards the front to retract the visor and towards the back to deploy the visor. Furthermore, if the wearer intends to retract the visor with a more natural movement, such as by grabbing a bottom portion of the visor with his thumb and pushing up the visor, the visor will likely not retract properly as the wearer, wearing thick gloves or mittens, will often lift the visor too much forward, off its guiding surfaces, resulting in rubbing the visor against the helmet shell and preventing it from retracting properly in its pocket, located between the helmet shell and a helmet liner.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,804,829 to Crye et al. describes a combat helmet. The combat helmet, among others, comprises a retractable visor. The visor is pivotally attached to the helmet and is moveable in an arcuate path between a deployed position within the field of view of the wearer and a retracted position behind a helmet shell. However, because the visor moves in a simple arcuate path, the visor engages the face of the wearer with a downward pressure, thereby providing an unpleasant feeling. Moreover, this downward motion of the shield does not efficiently seal the shield against the face of the wearer.
There is therefore a need for an improved helmet that integrates a visor but that does not have the shortcomings of the prior art.